Headfuck

If you walk out through my kitchen door and keep walking, down to the end of the semi-enclosed barbeque area, you will find a shed. Full of odds and ends – old shelves, Christmas decorations, kittens – it is the perfect size for an office, and I spend long minutes dreaming of the day when it’s cleaned out, revamped and mine (MINE!) to write in. There’s a small window, looking towards the poppy fields.

I want to write. I wake up and I juggle fiction around breakfasts and school lunches, showers and dishes.

Shush children, Mummy is writing.

I wonder if I’m doing them a disservice by keeping this small part of me intact, unsullied by motherhood. But I think I’d be doing myself a disservice if I give everything I am to my children.

I have projects on the go everywhere, and nothing is getting my full attention.

Before Evelyn, I used to write best of an afternoon. Now we start our days at 5am and by 8pm I am dead on my feet.

But isn’t this the refrain of tired parents everywhere?

Children are demanding, housework is insidious, creativity drips from the end of our washing up gloves until we’re dried out and used up, unable to do much more than read a bedtime story and fall into bed ourselves.

Yesterday I sent all three of my children outside to frolic in the mid-afternoon sun while I locked myself in my bedroom and wrote the things I needed to get out of my head. Writing is like that. I can’t ignore it, even as I procrastinate around it.

NaNoWriMo is looming on my horizon and I’m torn between wanting desperately to participate and knowing how good it is for me, to dreading feeling the pressure. But then pressure is good. I work best under pressure, right?

Right.

Basically, to summerise: My life is hard, fiction is hard, children are hard; I wouldn’t change a single moment.

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What I obviously meant to say was:

“Hail to our New Liberal Lizard Overlords. I bow down before you, a humble servant.

Please don’t report me to the Internet Police for daring to hold an unfortunate minority view.

I welcome this new age of hating everybody equally.”

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Last November, I participated in NaNoWriMo, writing 60k words of a novel in 30 days. It was hard, but rewarding and amazing at the same time. Sleepless Nights spent the month being neglected as I swapped my time between my novel, a tiny Evelyn, and everything else.

It wasn’t long afterwards that PND took up residence inside my psyche, making everything more difficult than it needed to be. I started meds, which saved my sanity and my marriage. Meds however, killed my creativity, even once I’d adjusted to them. I could still write, but it was harder to think of ideas and fiction was completely beyond me.

A little while ago, I tapered down my meds, before stopping entirely. I stayed on the meds until they began to make me feel the same way PND did.

This morning, I stood in the shower and had multiple ideas for what I wanted to write today. It had been months since I managed any good shower ideas, and honestly, I was so relieved to have my brain back – both from PND and from meds. I’ve also managed to cook again.

I missed this part of me.

Yesterday I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and wrote a flash fiction piece in response to a writing challenge. It was scary to write fiction again and scarier to publish it and share the link. But creativity is a great and scary thing.

I’m pushing myself. I’m coming back.

It feels good.

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I don’t know what is wrong with me. Time is catching up with us, and I’m treading water again, wondering if I need to increase my antidepressants, or sit in the sun, or stand in the dirt with bare feet. Maybe I need to bake a cake, or learn to run, or swing upside down again. Maybe I just need a moment of peace, a breather, where I can forget about the myriad of appointments coming up, and everything I have to do.

Evelyn’s swallow study is booked for early next week. Amy’s theratogs are ordered and will arrive soon. We’re braced up and strapped in and I’m falling apart here, mentally and emotionally.

Everything hinges on the next appointment. We can’t look back and wonder what we might have done differently, when we’re too busy trying to get through this moment.

We got through Eve’s EEG without any dramas, and with lots of twitching. Now we wait for the neurology team to read the results and get back in touch with us. Are they seizures? Are we looking at a movement disorder? Can someone please tell me why my baby twitches like a dreaming puppy? Why she can’t sleep without jerking herself awake? Why she can’t swallow anything anymore?

Everyone is stumped, confused by this child. She looks so good, and yet, the issues continue.

She pulled up to standing this morning and distracted, forgot to hold on. For a very long second, she stood there, alone and unsupported, before realising and sitting back down with a start. I applauded. She applauded. We all applauded.

Her shoulder clicks and her knees dislocate and I am exhausted. It’s a marathon, having a baby who isn’t quite normal.

(But at least we’re at home with her, not stuck in hospital)

I’ve had writers block and my brain exploded all over the floor, unable to cope with the pressure of my thoughts and no release valve. I’m trying, trying oh so hard to work out what I need to put in place to keep myself sane, but I’m three steps behind and I can’t quite catch up. I’m forcing myself to write, to listen to music, to dance with the baby. I can’t be all the things to all the people, so sorry, fuck you. My energy is limited and you can’t have it. Go away. (But not you. I like you.)

I’m anxiously waiting for Spring. Even with a mild winter, there isn’t enough sunshine (never enough sunshine) and I just need to be able to breathe again, and watch the trees bud up and the plants grow. Maybe photograph a frog that hasn’t been mauled by angry kittens.

Can someone please just book me a holiday please. I’m ready to be done.

/brain dump

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